Inside Wells Fargo & Co., Mary Mack looked like a rising candidate to become its next chief executive officer, shattering the industry’s last glass ceiling.
Repeated promotions, assignments to tackle Wells Fargo’s worst abuses, and the board’s public praise in mid-March of her tenacity and progress fueled talk of her ascent. But when Tim Sloan abruptly stepped down as CEO two weeks later, the board promised it would find a new leader outside the firm. Now senior executives fret the recruit will bring in new people -- potentially sidelining Mack and even postponing the day when a woman reaches the top of a giant U.S. bank.
“When the new CEO comes in it’s certainly possible that they’ll want to install their own people, especially in the retail bank,” said Brian Kleinhanzl, an analyst at KBW, pointing to the division Mack runs. “That’s where all the regulatory focus is.”
Mack’s fate is drawing attention because there are so few women within reach of the CEO suite across the nation’s 10 biggest lenders. That harsh reality was spotlighted at a congressional hearing in April, where the heads of seven major banks were grilled about why their firms have yet to put a woman in charge.
The industry’s glass ceiling has long proven particularly thick. Elite financial firms didn’t welcome women into their partnerships until the 1980s. And even now, women are typically paid less than men. Publicly and privately, many describe a landscape still shaped by decades of discrimination, harassment and retribution.
Mack, 56, vaulted to public prominence in mid-2016 when Wells Fargo moved her from the top of its retail brokerage to run its even larger community banking division just weeks before scandals began erupting there. She’s since scrapped sales quotas and faulty incentives, pushed out regional managers and bolstered internal controls. She oversees more than 100,000 employees across the country.
When the board posted evaluations of several top executives ahead of its April annual shareholder meeting, it praised Mack more than her peers, citing her talks with regulators, work on risk controls and “focused, collaborative and effective leadership.” She “exceeded expectations,” the board wrote, noting that three other executives it named aside from Sloan “generally met” them.
Bank’s Bench
Still, it’s far from certain Mack would’ve become the bank’s next leader. Sloan was expected to stay at least a few more years before pressure from regulators and lawmakers prompted his decision to step down. At that time, theoretical candidates also included Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry and wealth and investment management head Jon Weiss, among others, according to people close to the bank. (Weiss wasn’t mentioned in the board’s evaluations.)
If history is an indication, the board would have rotated contenders through top jobs for a few years before anointing a future leader. Sloan served as chief administrative officer, CFO, head of wholesale banking, president and chief operating officer before he took charge of the company.
Some senior executives still see a path for Mack or one of her peers to reach the top: Keep interim CEO Allen Parker, who joined as general counsel about two years ago. He could finish enacting measures to appease regulators, then hand control back to a banker such as Mack, Shrewsberry, Weiss or someone else to focus on revenue growth.